


a spectacle of idiocy

by youheldyourbreath



Category: Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: F/M, Road Trip Prompt, Spideychelle Week 2020, only one bed prompt, peter parker is too noble for his own good, these two idiots try and make it work after the events of ffh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:21:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24842947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youheldyourbreath/pseuds/youheldyourbreath
Summary: Ned was the one who suggested the road trip in the first place. Peter reminds himself to be mad at his friend for his misguided suggestion when they get back home. Michelle had a cool interview in DC that she won in some contest for young leaders. And Peter happened to be the only one amongst her friends that had a car. Tony had left it to him in his will. It was a little flashy for his taste, but it achingly reminded him of his mentor.She needed a car to get to DC. Peter had a car. It felt like a no brainer.Or, well, it would have been if he was not the world's most spectacular idiot.
Relationships: Michelle Jones/Peter Parker
Comments: 28
Kudos: 133
Collections: Spideychelle Week 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> happy spideychelle week 2020! this two-part fic fills both the road trip prompt and the only one bed prompt. make sure you go and read other spideychelle week fics and support all of the authors, and hype up the artists on other platforms. happy reading.

"So," Peter clicks his tongue. "Uh. You wanna DJ or...?"

Michelle frowns at him and he promptly shuts his mouth. 

He is the biggest, most spectacular idiot alive. 

"No," she says, taking mercy on him after letting him wallow in the silence for five whole minutes. "I don't wanna DJ." 

"Cause I could," he bounces in his seat. He is so thankful he is on driving duty to start. It gives him something to do other than look at MJ mournfully. He is really good at that, he has learned in the last three months. She has such a pretty face and she is so smart and funny, in a really dark way, and is so, _so_ mad at him. He a bajillion percent deserves her ire. The last thing he should've done when he came out of hiding after the Beck debacle was tell her he just wanted to be friends. That was on him. That was his bad. 

He wants to slam his forehead against the steering wheel. 

"Don't want you to DJ," she rolls her eyes, burying her face back in her book. "Totally cool with silence." 

He rolls his shoulders back. "Sure. Right. Course you are." 

Peter, as a rule, finds silence uncomfortable. Being friends with Ned is the best because he fills space. And before, well, everything, Michelle used to fill up space, too. It always made his chest warm how someone who was so icy with everyone else was able to talk to him. He could have talked to her for hours. After Europe, that one glorious week they had together before Beck blew up his entire world, was the best of his young life. They spent hours talking. Nothing was off limits. 

He misses her voice more than anything. 

"So," he starts.

"Totally cool with silence," she repeats.

"C'mon, MJ. How long are you going to be mad at me?" 

"Mad? I'm not mad. We're _friends_ , Peter. Why would I be mad?" He hears the sharpness in her tone and it cuts him. Rightly so. He is a spectacular idiot. 

"This road trip will go by a lot faster if we're talking." 

"Agree to disagree," she smarts. 

He groans. "You can't be mad at me forever." 

"Watch me," she replies and turns her shoulder to him so she is facing the window. It effectively shuts him out.

* * *

Ned was the one who suggested the road trip in the first place. Peter reminds himself to be mad at his friend for his misguided suggestion when they get back home. Michelle had a cool interview in DC that she won in some contest for young leaders. And Peter happened to be the only one amongst her friends that had a car. Tony had left it to him in his will. It was a little flashy for his taste, but it achingly reminded him of his mentor. 

She needed a car to get to DC. Peter had a car. It felt like a no brainer. Or, well, it would have been if he was not the world's most spectacular idiot. 

She had as good as thrown herself into his arms when he had returned from hiding. He remembers the warmth of her embrace when she folded him into her arms. He had been weary from the months he had spent on the run, with Kraven at his heels, but her hug had done wonders to rejuvenate him. Peter had dribbled a tear or two and MJ had only held him tighter.

"You're home. You're safe," she whispered. 

It had sent a shockwave through his system. He remembered what Kraven had threatened. Who he had threatened. There was no safety for him now. Not really. 

The whole world knew who he was and clearing his name did not protect it. He would forever be Peter Parker, The Spider-Man. 

It meant everyone he cared about, everyone who was as good as home for him, was now in eternal danger. Fear strangled him in a forceful chokehold. 

"We can't be together," he had told her, his lips pressed against her neck. 

She had torn herself out of his arms. 

He had not held her since. 

He hates this, he harrumphs in the driver's seat. Peter peaks a look over at MJ and she looks completely at ease in that irreverent way that he had always admired before he knew the girl beneath that thoughtfully crafted facade. "MJ," he says as they pass into Delaware. "How long are you going to punish me?"

She snorts. He tries to explain, "I am trying to protect you." 

Michelle snaps her book shut. She looks at him and he wonders how he could have ever thought she was apathetic. Michelle Jones feels more deeply than any person he knows. It is a well of feeling that goes so deep he could spend his whole life trying to tap the bottom to no avail. She is an enigma. 

And he had as good as broken her heart. 

"I don't need you to protect me," she says slowly, like she really wants him to hear her. There is profound strength beneath her heartache. He wonders if he will ever stop being in awe of her. 

"I know you think you don't, but you don't know these people, MJ. You don't know what they're capable of." 

"If you want to make unilateral decisions for us, Peter, then you had better learn to live with them. You don't want us to be together? Fine. We're not together." 

"I want to be your friend!" 

"Well. Maybe I don't. Has that ever crossed your mind?" Her words wind him. No, he realizes, that thought hasn't occurred to him. The very notion that MJ would not be in his life is suffocating. Debilitating. 

He whispers, "You don't mean that." 

"Sure I do," she says. She sounds exhausted. "I gave it my best shot these last three months. But I can't be friends with you, Peter. After this road trip, I need to be done. You need to let me go." 

* * *

He agonizes through most of Maryland. As they approach DC, after the nearly four hours of silence, he snaps. 

"I don't want to lose you." 

She heaves a long-suffering sigh. "Peter, we aren't going to talk about this anymore." 

He taps his thumbs on the steering wheel to center himself. He has always been a fidgety person. Over the years, he has learned Michelle only exacerbates it. "I _can't_ lose you," he admits.

"You don't get to keep me part-way, Peter. It isn't right." She amends her words with stunning clarity. "It isn't fair." 

It is the last time they talk on the drive.

* * *

When they arrive at their hotel, Peter grabs both of their bags from the trunk. They walk in discontented silence to the front desk and Peter tells the desk attendant, "Reservation under Parker."

She smiles jovially and clacks away at her keyboard. Peter resolutely keeps his eyes down. If there was a medal for avoiding MJ after that road trip, he would surely win. 

"Here we are," the attendant chirps. "Parker. One reservation. King-sized room." 

Peter feels his face drain. "Uh. No."

Michelle interjects, "Two queens." 

The young woman behind the desk squints at her computer. "I'm sorry. It says here the reservation for Parker is one room. King." 

"That's fine," Peter croaks. "Can we just change the room to be two beds, please?" 

"I'm sorry," she says patiently. Peter can almost feel MJ tense beside him. "All of the doubles are currently reserved by other guests. I can offer you a voucher for room service up to fifty dollars. Or I am happy to cancel your reservation."

"No." It is MJ who speaks. Peter startles a wide-eyed look at him. She addresses his confused look. "There is a huge press conference this weekend for the Douchebag in Chief. No way we get another room somewhere else." She turns back to the attendant and her face forces a smile. He knows how MJ feels about people in service. She always goes out of her way to be nice. It is hardly ever their fault that capitalism is fucked. 

His feelings for her warm his limbs. God. He is so gone for this girl. 

"It's fine," she finally says to the young woman who looks visibly relieved. "We'll take the room. Thank you." 


	2. Chapter 2

The white linen bed is a looming fixture in the harshly lit hotel room. In the distance, the rattle of water echoes from the bathroom as Michelle washes up for bed. Peter can’t muster the courage to move from his spot at the foot of the mattress. He worries if he so much as looks away it will disappear and they will have to divine an even more awkward way to sleep tonight. 

At least a king-sized bed has room enough for them to share without being pressed together too intimately. He can deal with a rogue ankle brushing against his leg in the middle of the night. He isn’t sure he would survive her sweet face curled into his arm, nose scrunched against bicep. Peter is a seventeen year old boy. He has his limits. 

The faucet from the other room goes quiet. The bathroom door swings open and he hears Michelle pad into the room as she tosses her toiletry bag on the desk. 

He feels her heat join his when she stands next to him, shoulders nearly touching, and remarks, “Any reason why you’re standing here?”

“Didn’t wanna pick a side of the bed in case you had a preference,” he says. Peter is impressed by his quick lie. History would show Peter Parker as a pretty awful liar, all thinks considered, so the fact that he pulled a moderately convincing one out of his ass is worth remembering. 

Not that he imagines MJ will believe him. She has a better read on his bullshit meter than almost anyone on Earth. While the rest of the world had been shocked by the reveal that he was Spider-Man, some high school girl in Queens with wild curls and decent observational skills had as good as pieced it out between decathlon meetings. 

For not the first time that night, he is struck with the gravity of losing her. It makes him sick. Who is Peter Parker without MJ? He doesn’t ever want to know. 

She was what had gotten him through the months of hiding, the lies and being hunted down like an animal by Kraven. All he had to do was remember the nine days they had together before Beck and the Daily Bugle and life as he knew it, and he could mine for some hope. She made him hopeful.

He glares at the bed. 

“I don’t have a preference,” she says, breaking him out of his circle of self-pity. “I suppose you should sleep on the side closest to the window. In case, you know, Spider-Man stuff.”

“I, uh, already checked. Windows don’t open.” 

“Right,” she clicks her tongue. “So side closest to the door, then?”

“Makes sense,” he agrees. The stilted, perfectly polite energy that permeates the room is foreign to their relationship. Peter is used to something more lived-in with MJ. The invisible boundaries she has thrown up make him miserable and he hates that he deserves it. After all, he had been the one that drew a line in the sand. He made a choice, the right to choice, to protect her, and now he has to live with the repercussions. 

Together, awkwardly and with some brief maneuvering, the two teenagers crawl into the large bed. Peter is relieved that his assessment of the bed was correct and it is more than big enough for the pair of them. Still, the part of Peter that was charmed by romcoms as a young boy whenever he and May went to the movies is fleetingly disappointed that MJ won't have to press herself up against him in the night. And equally relieved. Being a teenager is a mess of contradictions. 

"Cool," MJ says like she had turned over fifteen different things to say before landing on that one word. "Welp. Goodnight." 

"Goodnight," Peter's voice cracks. Mortified, he rolls on his side and draws himself into a ball. 

* * *

Peter doesn't sleep. He tries to but the bed is too comfortable, too plush, after months of being on the run. No, he admits to himself, it isn't the bed. It is MJ. He could reach out and pull her flush against his body if he wanted to and it is that knowledge that disrupts his sleep. He can't sleep next to a girl like her. 

It isn't fair to ask it of him.

The room is dark and quiet for far too long.

"Go to sleep," Michelle whispers. 

Peter nearly jumps out of his skin. She was meant to be asleep. He wonders how long she has known he was awake. 

"For nearly two hours," she replies. 

He flushes a deep red. He hadn't realized he asked that question out loud. "Sorry. I just. I'm having trouble sleeping." 

"Well. Go to bed." 

"Can't."

She rolls over and fixes him with a stare. It is challenging but softened by the late hour. She looks so, so beautiful. It disarms him. 

Which is why it is easy, second nature, to press forward across the length of sheets and kiss her. He had meant for it to be brief, an affirmation of everything the two of them had been through, but it transforms as soon as their lips touch. The darkness makes it too easy for them to fool themselves that everything is okay. 

She parts her mouth for him and he can taste the yearning, as his hand dips down her spine to cradle the curve of her bottom. MJ folds into him. When he had imagined this in the long, lonely nights on the run, he had hoped that she would be pliant and sweet and trusting, that when he held her in his arms she would cling to him like a buoy in a storm.

The rustle of the bedsheets give way to a blur of wandering hands and probing tongues. Peter only just has control of his urges, but it is like wrangling a bull with floss. It isn't designed to last. 

He notices how soft she is as his hands grope at her backside. He squeezes her cheeks and she giggles. It dances across the foundations of his heart, marking him forever, and he is so glad that she is laughing. He relishes the fact that, in spite of everything, he can still make her laugh. 

"What?" He asks. It is risky to talk when this moment could so easily burst but he has to know why she is laughing. He wants to share her joys. She shakes her head and draws him near for another kiss. He indulges in it for half-a-second before repeating, "What?" 

Her roll away from him is so sudden his hands barely have time to realize she is retreating before she is gone. Her back is a dark shadow in the outline of the skyline. She grumbles, "That was a mistake. We shouldn't have done that." 

Ben didn't break him. Vulture didn't break him. Tony and the Blip nearly broke him. Beck had tried his hardest, but still he did not break. And Kraven, for all of his months of running Peter to fear and exhaustion, had not broken him. 

But MJ's back, the uneven pattern of her restless shoulders and she breathes in and out, catching her breath from his kisses, finally does the trick. 

The fissure in his spirit gives way to a mighty crack. 

His fist doesn't muffle the sound of his bittersweet tears. He is made up of fracture pieces glued together by sheer fortitude and goodness and _it isn't enough_. 

It isn't fair.

He wants to be able to want something for himself, someone. He wants to have the freedom to be normal, if only on the odd occasion when the suit doesn't come first. He wants to hold a girl's hand and not worry that someone will pitch her off the nearest bridge because it would hurt him. Damn it, he wants to stop losing people. He wants to rest. 

He chokes down on his sobs trying not to bother MJ, but it is a terribly broken sound. Like someone is mining all of the hurt of the last three years, or eight, or whatever time is now thanks to the blip. His teeth bite down on the fleshy part of his fist. 

The sheets twist as MJ turns to face him. He wipes uselessly at his eyes. "I'm sorry," he barely manages to say between heavy breaths. "I'm sorry. Ignore me." 

"Why're you crying?" 

"I'm so tired, MJ," he admits. 

She pulls him into his arms, taking on the weight of his tears, and he allows himself to collapse into her. Her hand rests on the sore juncture between his shoulder blades and rubs a soothing pattern. He is tapped of energy. He is devoid of wanting. 

"Why're you crying?" she asks, later, when his tears have finally subsided to a manageable track of wet stains on his cheeks. 

"Before Beck, before all of it, I--I dunno, I thought I could have both things. Spider-Man isn't allowed to be selfish. He can't have liabilities. He can't have people his enemies can hurt. But Peter Parker could. He could have a girlfriend. One he really liked. And it wasn't selfish because that girl, the one he really liked, was safe." She presses a gentle kiss on his brow. "I could have the superhero gig and be Peter Parker. Now I don't have any choice. I can only be Spider-Man. And I--" He shutters. "--I can't afford to be selfish." 

"What about what _I_ want, Peter?"

"You don't get it." He indulgently presses his nose against her sternum. He feels cocooned there and in the darkness. Morning and its responsibilities feel so far away. 

"Help me to." 

He wraps his arm around her narrow back and the palm of his hand flattens against her spine. Even though she is holding him, keeping him together, he can feel how small MJ is, how breakable. "When Kraven had me bound to that sinking ship out in the Hudson, you know what he said to me? He said once I was dead he was going to hunt down everyone I loved. Rid the world of the stain of Peter Parker. And do you know what I thought?" She breathlessly shakes her head. "I thought _not MJ_. The whole world of people that matter to me and when I thought I was going to die, your face was the only face I could see. Yours, Em." 

She whispers cautiously, "Then why push me away?" 

"Cause if I lost you, it would break me." 

"I don't want this, Peter," she says. "I didn't want this. But you gave me no choice. I won't be kept halfway." 

"You think I don't know that? You think I don't know how unfair it is to you? All of this? Cause I do. And I hate it. I wish it was different."

"It is different." He childishly shakes his head. MJ insists, "No, Peter. It _is_ different. You take care of everyone. But who takes care of you?" He feels tears run down his face. He isn't even sure when he started crying again. Still. MJ takes it in stride. She wipes at his cheeks and cradles his face between her two hands. He looks up at her in awe. She is drenched in moonlight from the open window. "Who saves you?" 

There is a dazed sort of contentment swelling in his ragged chest when he leans upward and kisses her. He can do nothing but bask in the safety of her arms. He wants to be held and protected and cared for, and he wants MJ to be the one who saves him. He thinks she is the ballsiest, most spectacular girl he has ever met. 

"I'm so sorry," he says. And he means for everything. For the last three months. For the months he was on the run. For pushing her away. For making her feel kept only part-way. For not swinging her up in his arms the moment they reunited and kissing her senselessly. 

She seems to take his meaning because she swings her leg over his own and drags him close. He marvels at how her ass fills his hands and the sigh he is able to elicit from her lips in such a short period of time. Her own hand roves down his broad chest and fists in the disaster of a science pun t-shirt he wore to bed. She scrunches it up, impatient and demanding, and tears it off his person. He is only momentarily irritated he has to stop kissing her. But then she kisses him again, rolling him on his back, straddling his straining waist, and he can't quite remember to be annoyed. 

Teenagers are notoriously stupid. 

He cups the apex of her thighs and his mind reels that she is wet. She is dampening her pajama shorts. Peter sends a thank you to the horny teenage gods that make getting turned on at seventeen insanely straightforward. She jolts in his arms, startled, and he soothes her with a forceful kiss. Her body relaxes in his arms and her thighs spread farther apart, allowing his hand more room to explore. 

Peter dips his hand into the waistband of her shorts and lower. He is met with stunning slickness. He bites down on her lip. Hard. "You're not wearing underwear?" 

"Shorts are enough for bed."

"You were sleeping next to me with no underwear on? Jesus, Jones." 

She rolls her hips down, grinding over his sensitive clothed member, and quips, "I'm sorry. Are you mad?" 

He swipes his hand in the wetness and rubs a circle at the bud he finds between her thighs. She cries out. He traces and contours the juncture of her body and, while he is certain it is artless and unpracticed, Michelle keens all the same. "Oh my god," she sighs. 

It is not the perfect position, her perched in his lap with his hand shoved down the front of her pajama pants, but he can't stop himself long enough to find a better position. The attempt is fumbling, but he is so eager and so attentive to the gorgeous, kitten whines she emits that he does his best. Together, they make it work. 

He doesn't mean to start talking, but Peter Parker is chatty by nature. It is more observational than dirty. And yet, she quivers with each punctuated word. He keeps talking, discovering with her the things that make her body ache, and says, "You're so wet. I wanna taste you. Would you let me taste you, Em? I wanna bury my head between your thighs and make you cum." She moans and the vibrations ripple down to her cunt, clenching the finger he has buried in her, pushing in and out. 

She must say his name at some point because he responds with hers. "Michelle." He doesn't stop at her name. He tells her all of the things he likes about her. It is itemized. He has so many thoughts about Michelle Jones and what makes her wonderful that he could talk for an age. 

"Oh my god," she whimpers, fisting her hand in his hair, scrambling for purchase. "I'm close." 

Peter nearly blacks out. But his mind rebels. "Wait. No! Don't cum." 

Her eyebrows furrow and she looks so much like that girl from sophomore year with eyes that followed him everywhere that he can't help but kiss her for it. "Why not?" she asks when he is done kissing her. 

His voice gravels in the haze of lust when he says, "I wanna watch you." 

"What does that--oh!" MJ cries as Peter rolls the pair of them over. He cages her in his arms and peers down at the girl now laid-out beneath him. Her hair is cascaded all over the white linens and her lips are pouted in surprise. He doesn't know what he doesn't know, all of this is so new, but he knows he wants to watch her fall apart.

He peels the pajama shorts free and unbuttons her shirt. It spills open revealing her chest and he ducks his head to pull a nipple into his mouth. His tongue lavishes at the pebbled perch. Her spine rolls back off the bed, pulling his face closer, and he is so recklessly happy. 

Peter wants to tell her he loves her. He tables it for another time. They have so much time now. 

He pops off her breasts with a wet smack and her eyes flutter back in her head. He is glad for his foresight. He can watch her better from this angle. She is a sight to behold, wet and wonderful and _his_. 

Her hips buck insistently upward, silently begging for his finger, and he pecks her mouth. "Eager?" 

"Shut up, Parker," she snaps. But she is too breathless to be at all intimidating. Ruined. 

He plunges a finger back inside of her and her body gives way to it. It welcomes the intrusion. Her hands fist in the pillow above her head and Peter has a perfect, unobstructed view of her body. "I'm going to eat you out tonight," he remarks, as he fucks her with his finger. She moans, too delirious for words, as she starts to thrust back against his hand. He fills her with another for her efforts. It is remarkable, unthinkable, that she takes him so well. 

The dumb teenager in him wonders if she would take his cock, too. 

She grips him like a vice as her voice begins to climb. Her grasp on the English language is loose at best. She makes disjointed noises that could be his name, but all of her attempts at words turn into cries. His other hand travels down to press against her clit. He knows enough about the opposite sex to know that is what is going to make her cum. She lurches upward with a sob. 

"I can't believe you're letting me do this," he says, and he means it. "I can't believe you're letting me fuck you on my fingers and you like it. I can't believe I was so stupid. I can't believe I almost let you get away. I'm gonna make you cum over and over and over again, Em. As many times as it takes you to forgive me. You look so beautiful like this." 

She breaks off, her mouth falling open in an unheard scream, and she writhes against him in the throws of an unstoppable orgasm. It splits her apart and makes her body shake. Her nose scrunches up and he feels her toes curl under the blankets, brushed up against his leg. But it is the way she sighs his name when she is done that pulls him down with her. 

His mind goes white, then technicolor, then blank. 

When he returns to his body, his face is painted scarlet from embarrassment. He hasn't ruined a pair of shorts in ages. It feels so fourteen. But MJ is curling around him, pulling his face down for a kiss, and he pushes aside his shame to indulge in her afterglow. 

"I'm sorry," he mumbles into her naked shoulder.

Her hands comb into his dark locks. "Mm. I got that." 

"Please forgive me." 

"Four orgasms."

He lifts his head to blink down at her in confusion. "What?" 

"I will forgive you if you give me four more orgasms." The corners of her mouth are teasing him and Peter grins. 

"I plan on giving you way more than four." 

"Start with four, then," she tuts, swiping a kiss on the corner of his mouth.

"And then you'll forgive me," he asks, playfully.

Her eyes settle seriously and she reaches up to brush against the dried tear tracks on his cheeks. She is doing it again. Taking care of him. "I already forgive you." 

He kisses her thumb. "But you'll take those orgasms anyway." 

"Oh, for sure." Her eyes glisten. He throws the blanket up and starts to kiss a path down her naked stomach. She lightly pushes at his head, giggling. "Peter," she chastises. "You idiot." 

"Spectacular idiot," he agrees. "Lemme make it up to you." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND THAT ENDS SPIDEYCHELLE WEEK. thank you for reading along.


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